Good, but not perfect
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Bruce Donaldson's book is definitely the best detailed Dutch grammar on the market; he leads the way in a field dominated by books for beginners, and this book is essential for anyone wanting to extend beyond the most basic level of Dutch. However, it's not perfect: modal particles, a key part of spoken Dutch in particular, are not treated in this book. I also find that the section on modal verbs is not as clearly explained as I would like. On the whole, though, this is well worth the cost.
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A concise and well thought-out grammar for modern Dutch.
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Of all the Dutch-language-learning books available today, most of which are fairly basic and/or badly set out with respect to grammar comprehension, this is by far the best. It is written by a man who has a thorough knowledge of modern Dutch, but also a clear understanding of its linguistical history, by which he is able to explain archaisms and anomalies still extant in modern spoken Dutch. Tricky areas of Dutch, such as co-ordinating and subordinate clause word order, are clearly explained, and truly difficult aspects such as the particle "er" are made almost quite simple - I have struggled through many books to understand this in particular. It should be noted, however, that this is a grammar book, and not an exercise or phrase book; he also expects a rudimentary understanding of grammatical terms, but by doing so he doesn't need to waste time by explaining terminology, instead he gets to grips with the grammar. His explanations of Dutch prepositions, adjectival suffixes, and verbal prefixes (both fixed and movable) are clarity itself. I have long sought for a book which was able to clearly, though not necessarily simply, describe the Dutch language in a logical and comprehensible manner. Where phrase books, and learn-in-three-months books, have better information on vocabulary, and offer you phrases to suit the situation, it takes a book as good as this to really help you make sense of the language, so taking us out of the role of a parrot, to a comprehending user of Dutch.
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